Home > Sugarcane

• S. spontaneum -wild
• S. robustum -wild
• S. officinarum -cultivated
• S. barberi -cultivated
• S. sinense -cultivated
• S. edule -cultivated

The cultivated species are complicated hybrids and all species interbreed.

Harvested cane is processed by squeezing out the sap, from which sugar is crystallized out, leaving the liquid molasses. Fresh sugar canes are sometimes chewed for the juice. The molasses from sugar cane is used to make rum while the fibrous stalks, called bagasse, are used for paper, fuel or animal feed.

Over 100 countries grow sugar cane. There are 130,000 km² (32 million acres) of sugar cane worldwide. The top twenty producing countries harvested 1200 million tons of sugar cane in 2002 (more than 6 times the amount of sugar beets produced).[1] The largest producers are Brazil, India and China.

The history of sugar in the West is an important subject for understanding the emerging industrial power of Europe in the 1700s and 1800s. Sugar cane was grown extensively in the Caribbean and still is on some islands. In colonial times sugar was a major product of the triangular tradeA triangular trade is any three-way exchange, but the term is often used to refer to one particular instance: the 18th century trade between England, the west coast of Africa, and the Caribbean. Ships from England would ply the African coast purchasing sl of New World raw materials, European manufactures and African slaves. FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. found its sugar cane islands so valuable it effectively traded Canada to Britain for their return at the end of the Seven Years War. The DutchDutch redirects here. For other uses, see Dutch (disambiguation). The Netherlands ( Dutch: Nederland is the European part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy. It is located in northwestern Europe and borders the North Sea, Belgium similarly kept SurinameThe Republic of Suriname more commonly known as Suriname or Surinam (formerly known as Netherlands Guiana and Dutch Guiana is a country in northern South America, in between French Guiana to the east and Guyana to the west. The southern border is shared w, a sugar colony in South AmericaSouth America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. South America is situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. It became attached to North America only recently, geologically speaking, wi instead of seeking the return of the New Netherlands (New York). Cuban sugar cane produced sugar which received price supports from and a guaranteed market in the USSR; the dissolution of that country forced the closure of most of Cuba's sugar industry. Sugar cane is still a large part of the economy in Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Grenada and other islands. The sugar cane industry is a major export for the Caribbean but is expected to collapse with the removal of European preferences by 2008.

Brazil is a major grower of sugar cane where it is used to produce sugar as well as to provide the alcohol used in making gasohol and biodiesel fuels.

Ribbon cane is a subtropical type that was once widely grown in southern United States, as far north as coastal North Carolina. The juice was extracted with horse or mule-powered crushers, then the juice was boiled, similar to maple syrup, in a flat pan, then used in the syrup form as a sweetener for other foods. It is not a commercial crop nowadays, but a few growers try to keep alive the old traditions and find ready sales for their product. Most modern United States sugar cane production is on Hawaii although it is also grown in Florida and Louisiana.